And, most people fail to realize that this is a problem because the word should be "fewer" not "less".

So, come on, explain to my why this is (allegedly) so. Explanations that won't be accepted:

Because some dude made up a rule that says so.

Any explanation that consists of simply restating the rule in question in complicated and impressive-sounding language that may or may not betray the fact that the explainer has never been to a Linguistics 101 course.

Because it's convention. Why do we use the word "water" to mean that liquidy stuff you find in lakes? Why does "the" refer to a specific instance of an entity and "a" applies to any given instance of an entity? Words have meanings because that's how language works. We use "less" to indicate relative positions on a continuous scale. We use "fewer" to indicate relative positions on a discrete scale. Why? Because that's how it's been done since the 12th century. On the other, English in particular is

From dictionary.com [reference.com]: "Even though less has been used before plural nouns ( less words; less men ) since the time of King Alfred, many modern usage guides say that only fewer can be used in such contexts. Less, they say, should modify singular mass nouns ( less sugar; less money ) and singular abstract nouns ( less honesty; less love ). It should modify plural nouns only when they suggest combination into a unit, group, or aggregation: less than $50 (a sum of money); less than three miles (a unit of dis

"Data" is plural; the singular is "datum". Just like errata and erratum. In a sense you're right, "data" has turned into a popular word and its meaning is changing, but trying to claim that it has recently become popular to use it as plural is completely wrong; rather the reverse is true.

Not like errata and erratum. Common usage of errata maintains the separate identity of the individual items within the group: We've collected errata for this textbook over a 12 month period. (Each erratum trickled in from readers; the entire set didn't show up all at once.) On the other hand, if you refer to them as a group: The errata is ready for formatting. (Each individual item is not going to be formatted independently—the formatting will be applied to the errata as a whole, all at once. The impl

From dictionary.com: "Even though less has been used before plural nouns ( less words; less men ) since the time of King Alfred, many modern usage guides say that only fewer can be used in such contexts. Less, they say, should modify singular mass nouns ( less sugar; less money ) and singular abstract nouns ( less honesty; less love ). It should modify plural nouns only when they suggest combination into a unit, group, or aggregation: less than $50 (a sum of money); less than three miles (a unit of distance

Excessive abuse of grammar is frustrating and it can be enjoyable on occasion to correct it, but something about these guys just make me view them as douches. I'm not surprised that it was featured on NPR, of all places.

Of all the things to obsess over and waste your time "contributing" to in this world, correcting government signs is going to be it? Really?!

I didn't really count that as part of the benefit, since I have a general distaste for "random guy starts up popular blogspot page and turns it into a book!" stuff. Imagine how much that must piss off a real author with something they're having a hard time publishing? Damn.

On March 28, while at Desert View Watchtower on the South Rim, they used a white-out product and a permanent marker to deface a sign painted more than 60 years ago by artist Mary Colter. The sign, a National Historic Landmark, was considered unique and irreplaceable, according to Sandy Raynor, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix.

Really? Is anyone stupid enough to believe a sign could be a national historic landmark?

No, genius. The sign is attached to the actual landmark, which the sign is about: the Desert View Watchtower [wikipedia.org]. Mary Colter, who painted the sign wasn't an artist but an architect. Facts kind of matter, even when they're about grammar nazis.

Is it stupid to do their thing on a sign with actual importance? Duh... The thing is nobody but you assumes they did that knowing it wasn't just a poorly-written sign produced by

A local Long John Silver's had "Dungeonous" crabs for sale, and a local McDonald's has a cream "dispener". I've given up on trying to remember them all. Hand-written signs and those plastic letter signs are usually great places to find outrageous (and sometimes hilarious) errors.

Love this one. They are the same folk who would probably advertise their used 37' TV on Craigslist for some ridiculously low price for an appliance that needs its own building, then try to pawn something only 3-4' in diagonal off on you.

Language is about communication, it's not about the RULES of grammar. Yes, we have arbitrarily decided rules as to what gets an apostrophe and how things are spelled and so on...failing to follow this rule or that at any given time doesn't often hinder the communication. If someone says to me "pimipin' ain't easy", I get what they said. I don' t need them make sure they put the "g" on the end or use "isn't" instead of "ain't". Thanks to my abhorently abusive Catholic school education, I still cringe when I see someone's written "Thank's for shopping at our store's!", but I don't feel the need to correct them. That would just be douchey. You know...like these two guys.

Communication will work, but at the cost of lowered efficiency. Typos and the lack of clarity in a sentence will force most careful readers to backtrack and reread to ensure it wasn't an error on the reader's part. To me, it's a little like driving with a dirty windshield. Sure, it's doable, but its nonetheless distracting.On the net, I can accept that the rules of grammar are as variable as the backgrounds of the people writing and reading it. In print, or on permanent signage, I'm not so forgiving.

Like it or not, I can attest to the fact that I often mentally judge someone by their speech if I am talking to them, or by their spelling and punctuation if I am reading their writing. I am sure I am hardly alone. If they lack the ability to compose a coherent sentence, or the decency to use a spell checker, and have no concept of grammatical formations, then I am inclined to judge them as uneducated, ignorant or ill-informed, and I tend to disregard whatever it was that they were trying to communicate. Now, I grant you that sometimes one might type "Pimpin' ain't easy" for the effect - but the intention is to imply someone who is a lower-class, uneducated and possibly not very bright individual. If you regularly communicate in a similar style, you will look equally lower-class, uneducated and possibly not very bright. In other words, its a matter of communication. If you communicate poorly, you tend to be ignored, and in my opinion whatever you have to say matters less.

If I am reading forum posts and I come across a post that is utterly incoherent, misspelled, or contains a lot of grammatical errors, I skip it. That person has failed to get whatever point they were trying to make across to me at least, and likely others. If you want to be given attention, and your opinions to be given any consideration, learn to communicate using proper grammar, spelling etc. Failure to do so simply makes you look like an idiot.

Now, unleash the Grammar Nazis to let me know where I have erred in my post. I tried to be correct throughout, but I am sure I have made at least one mistake:)

Consider the missing comma here: "Mary had freckles on her but we liked her anyway." Without the comma, one could infer that Mary's ass was speckled.

That's nonsense on several counts.

But is spelled differently than butt.

No comma is necessary in sentences like your example. By which I mean you're going to find plenty of examples of excellent writers routinely dispensing with the comma in parallel grammatical structures.

If the sentence was spoken, intonation would make it quite clear what was meant. The pitch on the but would be higher than butt.

Pretty much any argument about "bad grammar" that's based on the ambiguity of a constructed example sentence presented without any context where it would be used is bullshit. Context routinely disambiguates language.

When I was in college in the mid-1990s, I had a clipped-out newspaper cartoon on my bulletin board, showing a group of people correcting signs, muttering things like "I before E!" and "It's Brussels Sprouts, not Brussel Sprouts!". I can't remember what comic strip it was, but the panel was captioned, "Roving Gangs of Rogue Proofreaders."

The best one were some Mexican people who took over a 'Friend Chicken' restaurant in like the real ghetto part of East LA.One of their signs they added basically said something to the effect "Sur(south)negroe(black) pollo(chicken)", sure enough next morning on the news there were black community leaders out there protesting it.

I think some of the best ones are in foreign countries and I remember a viral post going around showing all these Chinese misspelled names.

If you own a sign, it's yours. You get to alter it, deface it, replace it, do whatever you want with it.

If you don't own a sign, and don't have permission of the owner or some specific sign-maintaining authority, then altering it is an act of vandalism. Your intent is irrelevant. It's not your sign. Don't like it? Too bad. Offer the sign owner some money to replace the sign with one that is to your liking, and maybe they'll take you up on it.

There's a really old-looking hand-carved sign at Yellowstone that talks about the dangers of getting too close to critters. IIRC it's near Old Faithful, but it's been about 10 years since I've been there, so my memory might be bad. The wood is well-weathered, the carving is pretty good, and it's obviously a matter of some effort on the part of the park service to preserve it. Unfortunately, it has a single spelling error (reversal of two letters in a word), and there are various correction marks that have been scratched and scrawled into it over the years that really ruin the look of the sign.

If it's not yours and you haven't been put in charge of maintaining it, keep your markers and tools off it. Please.

You'd need to go to the original blog, which is still located on their website--you can get to the start of the original Great Typo Hunt from 2008 here:
http://www.greattypohunt.com/teal/blog/?p=4 [greattypohunt.com]

Here's an excerpt:"Jeff Michael Deck of Somerville, and Benjamin Douglas Herson, of Virginia Beach, Va., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Flagstaff after damaging a rare, hand-painted sign in Grand Canyon National Park.

They were sentenced to a year's probation, during which they cannot enter any nation

Languages evolve by, among other things, useful "mistakes" that are adopted by the speakers and writers - with notable exceptions (such as Latin, which is no longer spoken as an L1, or French, which has a standards body and for which speaking "incorrectly" is a crime, with fines, in France).

The English language was an evolving language as of the American Revolution. But beginning about then, some people tried to standardize it.

Of course they standardized the way it was spoken on the East Coast (but added a

"Whoosh", wrote the slashdotter with a smile on his face, feeling superior to the parent poster but slightly uneasy, for he was haunted by the possibility of nourishing a troll instead of educating the masses.

"Whoosh", wrote the slashdotter with a smile on his face, feeling superior to the parent poster but slightly uneasy, for he was haunted by the possibility of nourishing a troll instead of educating the masses.

But now we're going to have to have a debate on whether American or British rules for comma placement near a set of quotation marks are ideal, especially since you used double-quotes (traditionally American) with the British comma placement. I applaud your multiculturalism.

There's no such thing as rigid formal rules with any language that's in common use. Words fall in and out of use all the time - maybe the thing to which they refer becomes obsolete, maybe some other word finds favour instead - and accepted grammar changes all the time.

"Fuck", for instance, has not always been considered rude, and quite a few UK towns used to have roads called "Grope Cunt Lane". On a rather less coarse note, Bryson notes in "Mother Tongue" that the English language has changed quite a bit